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No Excuses: Kyle Maynard's Story of Triumph and Inspiration

Entrepreneur,
champion wrestler, New York Times-bestselling
author, motivational speaker, ESPY Award winner, and the first person to crawl
up Mt. Kilimanjaro—it’s a list of accomplishments you could imagine a classroom
full of children reciting when asked what they want to be when they grow up.

But at 28
years old, this is Kyle Maynard’s short list… of items he’s already crossed off
his bucket list.

A Georgia
native recently turned Californian, Maynard says he never set out to break
records. “I like to think of it all as an adventure,” he says.

According to
Maynard, it’s all part of living out his mission to show people their unique purpose in life. “When you specialize in one thing, you’re forced to give up other things,”
he says, describing his general philosophy. “I want to experience as much as I
can instead of being the best at one thing.”

Maynard climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.

No question,
Maynard’s accomplishments are spectacular. But what when you consider what he
has overcome, he’s an inspiration. Maynard was born with congenital amputation,
a rare condition affecting one in 2,000 babies. He’s also a quadruple amputee:
all of his limbs end before the start of his knees and elbows.

Throughout
his life, countless people have told him he couldn’t do things. Now, he’s
proving them wrong. Maynard believes that too often, there’s a blurred line
between acceptance and resignation. He says he knows he’ll never be an NBA
basketball player, a fact he accepts. But he says resignation would be to take
that inability to mean he couldn’t do anything at all.

Adopting the
quote, “Know your limits but never stop trying to break them,” Maynard tuned
out his naysayers and began pursuing Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). He identifies
wanting to be a MMA fighter as his first pursuit in doing something for
himself—not to prove a point. “The biggest challenge is with ourselves,” he
says. “If someone says ‘you can’t’ or tries to impede you, it comes down to
whether you accept that.”

Watch Maynard’s compelling journey to compete in MMA through this Snagfilms documentary:

Leaving a Bigger Legacy

Maynard now
hopes to leave a bigger legacy focused on pursing one’s dreams through his mantra
of “no excuses.”

Last year, he
spent 200 days on the road speaking at corporate events, grade schools, universities and programs
supporting injured U.S. military veterans. Though he tailors his speeches to his
audience, his message is
always about building a life driven by purpose and meaning.

Maynard at a recent speaking event.

His newest goal is to reach 1 million kids in
five years through his “No Excuses Challenge.” In a digital age where millions
relate to the YouTube call to “look up” from technology and pay attention,
Maynard worries kids aren’t learning the soft skills needed to survive.

“It’s more
than math and science,” he explains. “It’s the social skills and communications
skills and self-development skills. Kids who have access to that end up
excelling throughout their lifetime.”

Those
beliefs fuel his passion for teaching the things he believes aren’t often taught
in school: empowerment and empathy, self-efficacy and self-motivation. Knowing
it won’t be sustainable for him to continue traveling half the year, Maynard
hopes to harness a digital platform and use it to create an interpersonal community
that fosters responsibility.

“What I want
to do with the ‘No Excuses Challenge’ is to create goals for people that span
90 days with weekly checkmarks along the way,” he says. “People will be
connected in a small group and keep each other accountable.”

Moving Mountains

Of course,
that’s among Maynard’s many plans for the future. He’s training to compete in the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World
Championships and in a recent interview with ESPN, he announced he’s training to climb another summit in early 2015. This time his sights are
set on the highest mountain in South America—the 22,840 foot peak of Mt.
Aconcagua.

He says he’s not an
adrenaline junkie, and memories of the hardships encountered climbing and
descending (a particular challenge for his shoulders) Mt. Kilimanjaro caused him to take time off between hikes. But Maynard is
looking forward to making more memories like those formed on Africa’s highest
summit. One of his happiest memories was made on the way down the mountain when
he and his friends cheered triumphantly after reaching the top. At the camp,
someone was selling old-school glass bottles of Coca-Cola. His team of nine
pulled together bits of change to buy one. They all sat around together
and, despite the urge to gulp the contents of the small bottle, Maynard exercised
his well-practiced-and-preached self-restraint. Each climber was then able to
share one sip from the single bottle to celebrate a hard- fought journey to the
top.

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